I don’t choose the passages I quote. I am saying this because Jesus is talking about the temple and how it will be destroyed, and I live in a town where my employer is about to do a temple-like set of rebuilds. Including moving my department from leased, leaky buildings (and with increasing rents as the hospital tries to break even) into a clinical services block.

Dunedin’s largest construction boom in decades is about to begin, with the University of Otago revealing plans to spend $650 million upgrading its campuses.

The university for the first time yesterday released the schedule and total cost of its massive 15-year ”priority development plan”, which involves more than 20 projects and is expected to create ”hundreds” of jobs for Dunedin.

The plan includes a project to demolish the university’s six-storey 1969-built arts building and its property services building, both in Albany St, and develop a ”humanities precinct” in their place.

A ”teaching, learning and research” space is to be built in Portobello to replace the university’s old aquarium building, which has been closed since 2012 after it was found to be quake-prone.

The plan was for the space, scheduled to be completed at the start of 2016, to serve as a ”medium-term” solution ahead of building a completely new aquarium, probably in the harbour basin area. A new music facility, including a centre of performing arts, is also planned for near the existing music studio in Albany St.

Naylor Love chief executive Rick Herd said the programme represented Dunedin’s largest building boom in decades and would bring ”hundreds” of jobs to the city.”

It’s a major positive for the construction industry in the Dunedin area and it’s certainly going to create jobs and create optimism.”

‘A lot of local industries, particularly people like electricians, plumbers and mechanical services people, should be given a bit of confidence to be taking on apprentices and training people,” Mr Herd said.

The last big project was the rugby stadium, which is praised by those who do not live in Dunedin (and therefore have not had their rates bill hiked to pay for it). This is all happening as the student numbers in Dunedin are starting to fall.

I mistrust rebuilding programmes. All I see is a move, and every time the office changes around I lose productivity. But then, I do live in a university town.

Jesus Foretells Destruction of the Temple

Jesus left the temple and was going away, when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. But he answered them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”

Signs of the End of the Age

As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” And Jesus answered them, “See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.

“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

(Matthew 24:1-14 ESV)

At the end, not only are our building programmes going to not matter. (To defend, the university, a fair number of the buildings that are coming down will not meet modern earthquake standards and also are no longer fit-for-purpose. New Zealand shakes. The biggest city on my Island was flattened in an earthquake five years ago and, billions of dollars later, the rebuild is just starting. And that was not the Alpine fault — that was merely a seven on the Richter scale. The geologists expect an eight or nine every century (and a few volcanic eruptions), and we build accordingly).

In the end, the church age will end: some would say that it requires that every nation has heard the gospel. and we are getting closer to that every day. We will be isolated. We will be despised. And in those periods of condemnation, we may be able to speak to defend the faith, but the cost could be our lives.

In this time, we should not be deceived, as the older part of my generation were, by the idea that we can be free, and that the natural laws of society need not apply, that the family is fungible and morality can be relative.

An important quote by Pope Francis:

“Families are the home Church where Jesus grows. He grows in the spouses’ love and in the children’s lives. For this reason, the enemy attacks the family so much. The devil does not want it. He tries to destroy it, to prevent love from becoming free. Families are the home church. But married people are sinners like everyone else, they do not want to go in faith, in its fertility, in children and the faith of their children. May the Lord bless the family, and make it strong in the face of the crisis by which the devil wants to destroy it.”

When I think of the laws passed in recent years in New Zealand that don’t strengthen the family here, but instead chip away at undermining it, I can see the influence of the devil on our politicians. Recently, it was the redefinition of marriage, which destroyed the understanding of marriage by the state; and then previously, the anti-smacking law which allowed interference in the family by state in the raising of children; and in the last decade, the care of children act which turned parents into “caregivers” of their children.

Weak families mean a strong state and too many people dependent on the state. It cannot last for the long term, as the state will fall apart without strong families to uphold it.

The state is indeed a jealous God, and a false one. Expect the state to grow stronger as it destroys all other forms of social capital in the hope that it can control all: and that all will, as in the German Volk during the National Socialist Era, work together, as one, according to the plan from the leader.

Gung ho and all those lies.

The state is jealous of those who will worship the true God and not accede to their agenda. This is why we need a confessing church, one that stands firm, one that is not deceived, and one that may end up bearing witness to Christ from jail, or worse.

The state has it’s elite. a nomenkultura, Do not be them, and do not be like them. Vote with your feet, away from the universities if necessary.

Now locally, the time for this is “not yet”. The Arts faculty is being cut back: we do not have any illusions that we are providing an US style “broad education” but follow the Scottish model of professional degrees: in the 100 to 140 weeks of the medical degree (around 25 teaching weeks a year, over four core years, with a shared intermediate year on basic health sciences to begin and a full-time first intern year as an undergraduate after finals) there is no time for prerequisites and very little room for options. The student ministries are on campus, working in the new post modern mission field.

And we do not have trigger warnings or the obsessive speech codes which have mate the US academic system both fearful and stupid.

But that time is likely to come. Christ prophesied trouble: hold all temples and riches in this life lightly. You may have to preach from a dock. You may have to run, and in this fallen time, our brothers and sisters are dying. For Islam aims to be just another state religion, and, just like the pagans, is jealous of any rivals. The difference is that they tend to kill while the Western elite merely hound you beyond tenure.